Easily help Steemit avoid copyright liability
Although the media hyperlinks and textual content of our blog and comment posts are stored on the (supposedly decentralized) Steem blockchain, ostensibly the Steemit website is a centralized entity owned by the Steemit Inc. corporation. Thus Steemit Inc. might hypothetically be liable for copyright infringement claims. I know someone who had a small business website and was threatened to be sued for up to $150 per infraction by a copyright holder of an image he used without permission.
Even if the copyright claims are invalid, Steemit could in theory possibly become inundated with DMCA requests, forcing them to censor the display of some content even though the content would still be accessible on the Steem blockchain. As far as I know, the Steemit Inc. corporation has the ownership of at least 59 million of the Steem money supply which is to be used for awarding STEEM POWER to millions of free signups. If this money was lost to lawsuits, it hypothetically could impact on the plan for driving huge adoption of Steem.
Some have argued to me that Steemit isn’t liable for media copyrights because it is only serving the textual content and hyperlinks to the embedded media such as images, i.e. the media files are not served from the Streemit servers. That seems somewhat dubious and why risk it when we don’t necessarily have to? We don’t want the creators of Steem and Steemit to be slammed by some huge lawsuit as the usership of Steem grows to the millions.
There appears to be an easy way to find image files which are free for reuse without copyright infringement. When you click ‘Images’ at Google, then click Search tools and then click Usage rights and select Labeled for reuse from the drop down menu.
I’ve read the record labels were able to force the music distribution sites to sell them percentage ownership and change their business models by threatening them with huge lawsuits. I remember that the company that threatened my friend with a lawsuit over a single image, was also an aggregator of image rights analogous to the record labels in music. These power players ostensibly stand back and let the infringements accumulate before they swoop in to partake.
Good tip.
I believe, in terms of legal consequences, it is the image or video host that will typically have an issue with take-down notices etc.
Thanks. Even if you are correct, it could still be liability because they could be potentially brought into court and incur risk and expenses of losing and/or the cost of compliance when settling out-of-court. Numerous high profile cases have been settled out-of-court ostensibly in order to avoid this risk of losing the case. Analogously, I had read somewhere that the record labels were even threatening the online distribution sites with lawsuits for royalties on even a small riff in a song that sounded any similar to a riff in one of the copyrighted songs.
Notice that the cases where the court ruled in favor of hotlinking copyrighted images, this was for “fair use” of search engines providing preview thumbnails as an additional functionality. Whereas, Steemit is displaying the images as blog content, which some opinions think is copyright infringement. And even the courts are sometimes ruling it to be copyright infringement.
Additionally, blogs posted on Steem and displayed by Steemit are often hotlinking to image files uploaded by the blog author to a free image hosting site, thus can be viewed by the court as an attempt to avoid infringement by merely offloading the liability to an innocent third party website. Courts usually see right through such obfuscations of the economic reality and rule accordingly. The placement of the original file on a third-party image hosting site eliminates the technical ability of the original source to remove the image and disable hotlinking with server-side Apache rule.
There is an extra risk of being targeted because of that 59 million coin supply that Steemit Inc. is holding. Flies are attracted to honey.
Hmmm... if you have a good technical lawyer they may be able to argue that this part is wrong:
"Additionally, blogs posted on Steem and displayed by Steemit"
Why? Because Steemit only serves HTML code - not images. It's the browser (user side) that displays the photo after downloading it from a third party after being referenced by steemit. We think it is displayed by Steemit, but it is our browser doing it.
In other words, the "displaying" part is not as it seems. Sites give "building blocks" and the user-side assembles them into a structure.
One of the links in my prior reply disputes your logic.
Even if we argue that Steem would be the one liable and that Steemit is just a pass-through layer, the other issue is the economic reality that Steemit is either not paid anything for offering the service or is paid because it is controlled by the same few insiders who stand to profit most if the Steem token becomes more valuable. Also if Steemit is building a userbase to profit off of, then that is another economic argument against them merely being a pass-through.
I am not trying to help build a case against Steemit. Rather I am just suggesting to users to help out by not using copyrighted images.
I know that this is old, but I know that it is the website which hosts the images (Steemit Inc. ) that is served with DMCA takedown notices - not the person swiping the image! I have served a few DCMA takedowns myself on the web, and they do go to the website or server! If the website is a "Safe Harbor" meaning they have clearly posted rules about copyright infringement, then all the liability would likely go to the infringer. Without that in place, the website (Steemit Inc. ) are liable. Would like to see you post more about this topic. I'm writing about it quite frequently because I'm appalled at what I am seeing on here, and what is a time-bomb ticking away, but it's NOT a popular subject. LOL!
We already have Blockchain smart contracts that distribute royalties to the rights holders. Don't know if the major labels will like it. Means they can be audited.
That's really easy. No more going to Wikipedia and only using their images.
Very good infos mate thanks for this ,
We might dont want to get sue by lawyer :p
10× from what you earn
Talk to my lawyer
LoL
Great post. But some sites don't allow Google to index their pictures. I created a list of free resources to use in your posts and websites. It handles pictures, vectors, illustrations, and even full HD free videos. All usable without ANY attribution.
Check The List Out Here
Great post and very valuable for members that are not sure about copyright material. Lets hope this sinks in a bit and more steemit users get educated to avoid any complications in the future.
I am still having a hard time figuring this out. If i have pictures I have taken with my phone how do I load them onto a post without you busting me for it and saying its copyrite or what ever? Why does it have to be posted to a site for me to post it?
if i find a photo from google like you have told do i have to type source? and what should i say that i have taken this photo from google?
Thanks for the post and identifying how to find images which are free to use. I have been looking at some images on Pixelbay which are labeled CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication. I am hoping this is sufficient.
@anonymint this is really helpful specially the google image search labelled for reuse, just one question though, if I use images from somewhere and add a link below the image for the source will that gives me permission to use it on Steemit posts without getting flagged for plagiarism?